Ever wondered how much your city is paying that cop who just pulled you over for blowing through a red light? How about the worker who cleans the restrooms at the park down the street?

The details of more than $12.2 billion in tax money spent on local government salaries in 2009 are now available on a searchable online database created by Bay Area News Group.

The database, at www.mercurynews.com/public-employee-salaries, covers more than 200,000 workers at 109 government agencies in the Bay Area, including most cities in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. It will continue to be expanded as agencies provide additional information.

Some highlights in the data include:

Three public employees in the region were paid more than half a million dollars each in 2009: the chief administrator of Fremont’s Washington Hospital, Nancy Farber, grossed $847,811.36; Charles J. Keohane, grossed $516,118.49, in his final year as a San Francisco deputy police chief, including $352,000 in cashed-in vacation and compensatory time; and Dr. Jana Dolnikova of Santa Clara County’s Valley Medical Center grossed $507,748.68.

The Alameda County Fire Department, which is a separate government agency, topped the

109 entities with an average salary of $144,345.23 for its 311 full-time employees last year.

Within city governments, fire department employees are often the highest paid. Firefighters in four cities — Millbrae, Vallejo, Redwood City and Mountain View — exceeded $150,000 in average gross pay last year.

The online database is being made available three years after the California Supreme Court rejected privacy claims from employee unions and ruled that public employee compensation data must be released. About 80 percent of government budgets are spent on salary and related personnel costs such as health benefits and pension contributions.

The database omits some agencies because the Bay Area News Group has not yet been able to obtain information from them in a form that would allow it to be easily displayed online.

“Count on us to keep updating this data often,” said Pete Wevurski, managing editor for the Bay Area News Group. “It’s vital in a democracy that taxpayers know how their money is being spent, particularly how much of that money goes to public employees.”

Thomas Peele is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter on the Bay Area News Group's regional team. He has worked at newspapers, including Newsday, for 34 years in California and elsewhere. Peele focuses on government accountability, public records and data, often speaking about transparency laws publicly.

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